Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 1.0 points higher (40.8 vs 39.8) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $363; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8-Flash-Next.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 39.8 | −2.5% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 2.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $362.72 | −41.7% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 41.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.11s | 50.49s | +726.4% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 726.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 2.5% less intelligence, 41.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 726.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8-Flash-NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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